Welcome to the Mirror World

November 17, 2020·33 min·2 clips

Kevin Kelly's framework for business forecasting: 'The goal is not to predict the future, the goal is to not be surprised by it — map the corners of what's possible and rehearse what you'd do.'

The imagined morning begins in 2050, give or take. Before anyone leaves home, augmented reality glasses turn a blank bathroom wall into headlines, calendar details, and sleep data. Coffee still exists there, thankfully. Directions show up as giant blue arrows, and a power and light worker handles invisible objects beside a lamppost while looking at internal wiring. The episode uses that scene to make the mirror world feel less abstract: a digital layer on top of ordinary life, where information and work tools sit in the room with you. Then the conversation gets stranger, in a useful way. The guest describes a chair replica as a simple hack for making another person's presence feel convincing. The image does not have to look real. Even a cartoony shadowy figure can give someone enough cues to feel as if another person is there. That changes the conversation. The host follows with a careful question about which interactions fit which environments. Then a virtual dog barks. The moment gets a laugh, and the host turns toward commercialization and what earlier internet growth can teach this next layer. Ads become the plain test case. The guest separates advertising from direct media support, especially subscriptions, while leaving room for ad-supported access. The exchange stays careful. It does not treat the technology as magic or doomed. It keeps asking where the incentives settle. The close is optimistic, but not syrupy: fear is easy, and optimism gets the last word.

As heard by us

A business-minded look at augmented reality, presence, and the risk of letting ads become the mirror world's default economy.

The Growth Show uses Kevin Kelly's mirror world idea to turn augmented reality from a gadget story into a business model story. The episode opens with a brisk 2050-ish scenario: glasses putting headlines and sleep data on a bathroom wall, navigation arrows hanging over the road,…

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Why you'd press play

You want a practical take on how the mirror world gets paid for after the wow wears off.

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